INVERERNE. 73 



February 9th. Very severe frost, much snow and drift. 

 The fieldfares in great numbers on the Swedish turnips, and 

 I was much astonished at the great damage done by them to 

 the roots. I watched some of the birds digging at the turnips 

 with their bills and chipping and scooping out great pieces, in 

 this manner destroying half the crop at least by letting the frost 

 into the roots. The fieldfares themselves (some of them being 

 shot) had so strong a smell of turnip that they could not be 

 cooked, being perfectly unfit to eat from the rankness of their 

 smell, which resembled that of rotten turnips ; otherwise the 

 birds were not only in good condition, but quite fat. 



The whole bay and all the streams and springs were so filled 

 up with drift snow and ice that there was not a single duck of any 

 sort to be seen, with the exception of one morillon, who had found 

 out about six feet square of open water in the burn. On being 

 flushed from this he flew a long distance up the stream in search of 

 some other opening, but, not finding any, came back and plumped 

 down into the same place close to me, and there I left him. 



I never saw the low country here in such a state with snow 

 since I have lived here. Saw a flock of larks, which (this winter) 

 is a rare sight. 



February IQtli. Deep snow. In tracking rabbits on the 

 muir, observed that several of them had merely gone fifty yards 

 from their seat under a furze bush, and after eating the shoots 

 off the nearest bush, had returned to the same place. 



February 1 2th. I find many wood-pigeons that I kill have 

 the upper part of their bills and their feet covered with warty 

 excrescences, especially the later young birds of this season. 

 Those who have this disease are generally weak and thin. 



February 1 5th. Shot ducks in Loch of Spynie. There are 

 immense numbers of mallard and wigeon on the loch and some 

 pochards, pintail ducks, morillons, and teal. We killed a female 

 duck of a kind quite unknown to us a beautiful shaped bird 

 with plain brown plumage like that of a duck teal, but with 

 every feather marked with a shell or scale pattern, and about the 

 size of a hen wigeon. I am inclined to think that it is a female 



